27
THE STATE DEPARTMENT
The side door to Meg Whitney’s private dining room abruptly opened.
An aide stepped in, whispered in the secretary’s ear, and then stepped back. Whitney immediately got up, apologized to her guest—the French foreign minister—and headed straight for her office. A moment later, her chief of staff burst in from the other side of the room, grabbed the remote off her desk, and turned up the volume on the main TV monitor.
“This is CNN breaking news. Now live from Washington, here’s Carolyn Tam.”
“The U.S. bombing of a facility near the Libyan city of Ghat on Saturday night now appears to have been a deadly and disastrous mistake,” the Emmy Award–winning anchor began. “Rather than serving as the headquarters of the terrorist organization known as Kairos, the compound was actually a school for severely handicapped children.”
Whitney gasped as the image cut from the cable network’s D.C. studios to grainy, handheld video of mangled wheelchairs amid still burning and smoking rubble.
“CNN has obtained exclusive video taken by a Libyan doctor who lives in Ghat,” Tam continued. “It contains images not suitable for children, and we urge extreme caution.”
As the undersecretary of state and the chief of the Near East bureau now entered the room, Whitney found herself staring at the charred bodies of children and teachers, blackened and soot-covered stuffed animals, along with piles of burned, twisted, and mangled medical equipment.
Her eyes filled with tears. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”
“We’ve got to make a statement,” her chief of staff said. “We have to get out in front of this and fast.”
Whitney nodded but could not take her eyes off the screen. “Get me the president.”
✭
THE WEST WING
The national security advisor’s private line lit up.
Maggie Allen, his executive assistant, picked up immediately. “Mr. McDermott’s office. May I help you?”
“Maggie, it’s Marcus. I need to talk to him immediately.”
“Sorry, sir, but he just stepped into a lunch with—”
“Pull him out,” Marcus ordered.
“I really can’t do that, Agent Ryker; he’s—”
“Maggie, you’re not listening—pull him out now.”
✭
CIA HEADQUARTERS
Stephens was on a secure call with the Taiwanese chief of intelligence.
Dell burst into his office without knocking and broke the news. Just as she’d suspected, Stephens went ballistic, unleashing a torrent of profanity and ordering her to have his motorcade and protective detail ready to go in five minutes.
“Text me updates every ten minutes and pull together the senior team,” he said as he grabbed his suit coat and headed to his private elevator. “I’m going to the White House.”
✭
THE U.S. CAPITOL
Robert Dayton had just cast his vote on the Senate floor when his phone rang.
“Make it quick, Annie, I’m already late for a luncheon with the majority leader.”
“You’re going to be later,” she told him. “Head to the Cloakroom.”
“Why?”
“CNN is reporting we bombed a school in Libya for severely disabled children, not the Kairos headquarters.”
“That’s impossible.”
“They have video from inside the decimated compound, sir—the images are as macabre as anything I can remember. Burned body parts. Toys. Bunk beds. The remains of a playground—swings, slides—it’s horrifying.”
“How in the world did a CNN crew get there?” Dayton asked, racing off the Senate floor to find a television. “Isn’t the sandstorm still going?”
“Yes, sir,” Annie confirmed. “But it’s footage taken by a local Libyan doctor. In fact, they just ran an interview with him, sobbing, enraged, trying to describe the scene, the stench. He’s saying at least forty-two children are dead, along with at least a dozen teachers, possibly more.”
Dayton entered the Cloakroom to find a half-dozen other Democratic senators watching the grisly images.
“I have to make a statement,” he told her. “I’m heading to the press gallery.”
“Senator, please don’t—not yet. Let me gather more facts and—”
But Dayton hung up his mobile phone and entered the hallway. A gaggle of reporters, cameramen, and producers shouted questions at him. No other senators were in sight. He was the first.
“Senator Dayton, how do you respond to this breaking news out of Libya?” an MSNBC correspondent demanded as her network carried the moment live.
“Like all Americans, I’m sickened by the images we’re seeing out of Libya and by the tragic loss of life,” Dayton replied.
“Do you blame the administration?” a reporter for the New York Times shouted.
“Clearly, this is one of the worst intelligence failures in U.S. history since 9/11.”
“But do you blame President Clarke personally?”
“Who else?” Dayton asked. “This is a diplomatic disaster for this administration, and I’m demanding immediate hearings into what the president knew, when he knew it, and how he could possibly have ordered the bombing of a special-needs school.”
“Would you support the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate how this ‘intelligence failure,’ as you called it, happened?” a CNN reporter asked.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“But if the administration stonewalls?”
Dayton knew he could brush off the question as a hypothetical. He also knew he’d be scorched by his constituents back in Iowa if he didn’t answer candidly. So he did.
“If President Clarke is stupid enough to stonewall a congressional investigation into how he bombed a school full of teachers and children, then an independent counsel will be the least of his worries. He’ll be looking at a stampede toward impeachment.”